Jack Kelly posed and interesting question in his recent RealClearPolitics column: Can the Democrats notsee they are plunging off a cliff?

He also refers to a recent Dick Morris column in the NY Post that might give part of the reason for the above answer.

Democrats are assuming all the anti war sentiment is from folks like Cindy Sheehan when in fact much of it is from conservative isolationists who just want the world to go away. And they are not concerned with Atta's civil liberties. Or foreign aid...or how the world sees us...or the approval of the United Nations. Like Garbo, they vant to bealone.

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I'll allow an entire week for someone to arrive at anything that might resemble an answer. Carville and Morris were both masterful tacticians - for a single candidate. They didn't need to work on strategy at all, Bill Clinton was the most masterful liar to hold public office since LBJ quit in '68. He was also bad for the Democrat Party in many ways, not least of which was his total inability to get anyone elected other than himself. Hillary is much worse. She won't even be able to get herself elected to the presidency. Her pathetic attempts at triangulation lend credence to Morris' reputation as a tactician.

The Dems aren't plunging off a cliff. They are lying in a warm bath with an open vein and asking themselves why the water is turning red. Time will provide the answer, the question now is how much time will be required? My estimate is that the autopsy will begin in '10, although the corpse may still be quivering a bit. By '16 the party will be a memory but what will replace it?

That's the interesting question - what type of party will replace the Democrat Party?

I like Glenn Reynolds. I think he is interesting and very smart but I think the pork busters thing is not going anywhere. I know conservatives love the idea of shutting down porgrams etc...but....

Both parties seem to be stuck in the past. Bush is moving forward.

I think we need spening restraints, don't misunderstand me, but I also think that people expect certain things from government..like it or not. That does not mean we have to go crazy, but at the same time most people do not think of Education spending as waste or health care for that matter.

And the Democrats just do not seem to be able get in their heads that it is not 1969 anymore.

Did you hear what Murtha said? I don't have a link handy but he supposedly said that young people should not join the military. I saw Ollie North going on about it and he was pissed.

Isolationism is not a left-right issue. It cuts across those lines, and across the Democrat-Republican lines. Both parties have isolationists. Bush basically ran as a low-level isolationist in 2000. I'd say that on some level a good 90% of the country would be very happy if we could be left alone.

But we can't. And given that unfortunate fact, the question is how exactly we are going to engage the world. The pin-striped Ivy-leaguers like Kerry don't really feel the least bit comfortable with the real America outside the blue castles. They're much more comfortable with similar pinstriped types from elitist schools in France and Switzerland. They'd rather have the UN running things than allowing a bunch of flyover types a say. So that's one approach: the US engages the world only as a subsidiary of the UN.

The other approach is that we respond when we have to. This is Bush's approach. Do what you need to do. "Get 'er done."

The historical fact is that the party that officially embraces isolationism is usually the party that loses. Right now that seems to be the Democrats.

From this side of the pond the actions of the Democratic party,given that this is a time of peril,seem quite simply loopy.My apologies to those decent people who have seen their party hijacked by loop the loops like this